A significant concern of the present day is an upsurge in childhood obesity. Results feared from this situation include an increase in the diabetic population, and the dramatic concern that this generation may be the first to have a shorter expected life span than its progenitor.
Though proper diet will play a role in correcting this situation, physical activity and exercise will be key.
A number of experts identify television viewing, computer games, and browsing the Internet as non-physical activities in which young people are devoting increasing amounts of time, to their detriment. While these activities are not inherently unhealthy, their innate attractiveness results in the large degree by which they supplant more active pass-times, and that displacement seems to be causing harm to children at large.
Video Games to Motivate Exercise
It should be possible to harness the attractiveness of television, video games, and the Internet to motivate people, especially children, to get more exercise. Indeed, numerous products have linked physical activities to popular consumer electronic entertainment devices.
In an attempt to encourage video game players to convert their play time into an exercise session, a variety of video game controllers have been created which require some form of physical exertion to generate the signals needed to control a video game.
For instance, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,645,513, Haydocy et al. teach a stationary bicycle as a controller for a game console. In U.S. Pat. No. 6,183,365, Tonomura et al. and in U.S. Pat. No. 6,669,563, Kitami et al. teach a boxing glove sensor as a controller for a game. Numerous other examples exist of exercise-based video game controllers, including sensors for tracking swinging arms and kicking legs, and exercise on a stepper machine.
Generally, these suffer from one or more of three drawbacks. First, the control is often inelegant and clumsy, for instance, where large body motions are required to trigger events that are usually represented by a rapid series of button presses. In such a case, the play and enjoyment of the game can be seriously disrupted. Second, the exercise-based controller is rarely well integrated into the video game. Functions requiring combinations of buttons on a regular controller may not be accessible on the exercise based controller (e.g. holding both feet off the ground). Third, the effects of exercise may inhibit the playability of a game. Exercise machine noise may drown out crucial audible hints or instructions. Heavy breathing and sweaty hands may compromise attentiveness and reaction time. In general, concurrent exercise is sure to degrade a gaming experience, though concurrent game playing may improve an exercise experience.
Playing to this positive aspect, exercise equipment was designed that incorporates game and simulation elements. Rather than attempting to introduce exercise into pre-existing games, special games were designed where greater exertion on the exercise equipment would produce a greater desirable response in the game. Examples include those systems taught by Hall-Tipping in U.S. Pat. Nos. RE34,728 and 5,362,069, and Dugan in U.S. Pat. No. 5,947,868. This class of systems is ultimately unsatisfying due to their limited repertoire: they come with one or few games or scenic software loads, and rarely, if ever, are more made available. Further, the game industry, like Hollywood, is a hit-driven industry. The likelihood that a specific game will be a hit is low. Limiting adoption of such systems further is the fact that exercise equipment incorporating games and simulation tend to be expensive relative to both ordinary game consoles and standard exercise equipment.
Some compelling games have been designed from the outset to incorporate physical movement, either urgent or sustained, which results in a good physical workout.
DanceDanceRevolution, by Konami Corporation, LTD, of Tokyo, Japan, was initially available only for arcades because of its specialized foot-position-sensitive dance platform. Loud, rhythmic music plays and a scrolling series of arrows indicate upon which positions on the dance platform the player should step for the next beat. At advanced levels, a successful player is receiving a high impact aerobic workout! The game, a rare hit, has become so popular that home versions of the foot-position-sensitive platform are available (such as the RedOctane Dance Pad by RedOctane of Sunnyvale, Calif.) for use with consumer gaming consoles (such as the PlayStation 2 by Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc. of Foster City, Calif.). Though very successful to date, DanceDanceRevolution has drawbacks: The area where the game can be played is limited to the dance platform (or home version pad), there is a limited repertoire of useful movements, and the single game-driven motivation is to achieve a better score.
In a different direction, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,213,872 and 6,302,789, both by Harada and Shimizu, teach that the count of a user's steps made by an electronic pedometer can control an animated character, and provide a unit of exchange within a game. Productized by Nintendo of America, Inc. of Redmond, Wash., as “Pokémon Pikachu 2 GS™”, the self-contained pedometer and game includes a display screen, clock, control buttons, and an IR communication port. The count is converted to an in-game currency, “Watts,” which can be used in four contexts. First, to the animated character, which simulates a pet, Watts can be given as a treat that makes it happy. Second, Watts can be used as a gambling currency in a card game, which pays off in Watts. Third, Watts can be transferred via the IR port from one pedometer to another, like device. Fourth and finally, Watts can be transmitted via the IR port to compatible Nintendo GameBoy® games, specifically Nintendo's games “Pokémon Gold™” and “Pokémon Silver™”, wherein the Watts activate a gift to a character in that game.
There is a significant drawback to the Harada and Shimizu pedometer game, however. Their pedometer, as is common, uses a vibration detector to detect steps. According to the “Pokémon Pikachu 2 GS” pedometer instructions, “ . . . the number of steps you take each day will be counted . . . ” and it “ . . . will also count your movements when you run, jump or skip.” In fact, it will count just about any motion. The indiscriminate nature of a vibration count opens a source of significant cheating by players: By merely rattling the pedometer in one's hand, “steps” are detected, at far greater speed, and with far less effort, than are archived by actual walking. In one test, five minutes of rattling was approximately equivalent to a day's worth of walking. To the extent that the rewards offered for steps are compelling, the player is motivated to rattle the device and gain the rewards immediately, rather than walk and have them tomorrow.
Rewards and Games
Many game machines offer rewards. Almost all games offer scores. A score is given for certain achievements, and is, to some degree, a function of skill. Your lap time, in a race; ten points each time the ball strikes a mushroom bumper in pinball; thirty points for each pointy-headed alien shot in Space Invaders™ by Taito; are such scores are improved with higher degrees of skill. But scores alone are intangible and usually fleeting rewards.
Redemption games, usually found only in arcades, offer coupons in exchange for high scores. The coupons can be redeemed for broad array of prizes, rewarding skill with real-world treasures. This makes redemption games extremely popular with children and adults.
In Mario Party™ and its sequels, all by Nintendo of America for their Nintendo®64 and GameCube™ consoles, high scores can be redeemed for access to still more games. A predetermined collection of mini-games is present within the Mario Party™ cartridge. However, when first activated, none of the mini-games is available for players to play at will. Only by playing the main game well and successfully earning points can individual mini-games be acquired for on-demand play.
Accelerometers in Games
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,641,482, Masuyama and Suzuki teach using a pair of accelerometers in a handheld game to detect a tilting of the handheld unit, and to use the tilt measurement to affect the motion of characters and objects on the screen. Realized as Kirby Tilt ‘n’ Tumble™ by Nintendo for their Gameboy® console, the accelerometers detect the pitch and roll orientation of the handheld game console. In response, characters and objects within the game roll or drift about the handheld screen as if they were pinballs, actually under the influence of gravity.
Flash Cartridges for Handheld Games
As memory capacities have grown over the years, the size of computer games has grown, too, though not as quickly. Today, a single flash memory chip contains enough memory storage to hold images of up to many dozens of game cartridges from years past. This, in conjunction with the Internet, has given rise to a great bane of handheld game cartridge manufacturers: Third-party handheld game accessory manufacturers are selling flash memory-based cartridges, which allow illegal copies of game programs extracted from legitimate cartridge ROMs to be easily distributed over the Internet and freely loaded into any number of flash memory cartridges, thereby undermining the market for both new and old games. For example, a flash cartridge product called EZ-Flash Advance advertised for the Nintendo GameBoy® on a web site called www.gameboy-advance.net by an third-party manufacturer (that has gone to some length to obscure its identity) includes 256 MB of flash memory in a cartridge adapted to work in the Nintendo GameBoy Advance™ handheld game system, and a USB cable that communicates between the GameBoy Advance™ and a PC. With the cable connected, the PC is able to upload the ROMs of legitimate cartridges plugged into the GameBoy® to a file, or download a file into the EZ-Flash cartridge. Both activities infringe the intellectual property rights of the ROM copyright holder. The pirate files are easily uploaded to the web (or emailed) and the web site promotes links to peer-to-peer file sharing groups to make finding pirated files easy, adversities faced by the music industry since the advent of MP3 players.
Though flash-based cartridges promote illegal trafficking in pirated ROM files, their allure is sure. The price for a 256 MB flash cartridge is roughly three times the price for a like-sized, but legal, flash disk with USB interface for a PC. That overage is roughly the cost of three or four new, legitimate, game cartridges. Besides providing access to pirated games, the flash cartridges also provide a high degree of convenience. The ability to carry a single cartridge with an entire library of games is a distinct advantage over the present requirement of toting many little cartridges, which are awkward and easily dropped or misplaced.
A significant disadvantage of present day ROM-based cartridges, one that is exploited by flash-based cartridge pirates, is that a ROM image from a single game cartridge is usable in every compatible handheld game system. An analogous disadvantage is present with MP3 music files, and the MPEG files that comprise video programming on DVDs.
Summary of Needs Unsatisfied by Prior Art
These prior electronic game and exercise technologies have failed to meet a number of needs.
There remains a need for a system capable of recognizing distinct, specific exercises, so that a well-balanced regimen of exercise can be prescribed and/or monitored.
There remains a similar need for a system able to measure skill level in performance of an exercise. Not merely a need for tracking a count of repetitions, but for a system able to discern between an exercise done skillfully, and an exercise done improperly.
When an exercise is recognized by the system as being performed improperly, there is a need for the system to provide corrective advice.
When an exercise is performed, correctly or not, there is a need for the system to deliver appropriate encouragement to the user.
The need exists for a system that tracks the progress of the user as he grows in skill, so that the system can prescribe new exercises appropriate to the user's advance.
There is the need for a system to prescribe exercises appropriate to the achievement of a health goal, but without exceeding the present capabilities of the user.
An audio interface is needed that will allow a user, while performing exercises, to receive instructions, encouragement, criticism, and advice, pertinent to the exercise.
A supreme need is for a way to reward a user, especially a child, for undertaking, advancing, and maintaining a level of healthful exercise.
There is a need for a way to provide as a reward, when appropriate, games or other entertainment built into an exercise promoting system.
There is a similar need for providing games or other entertainment that come to the exercise promoting system from an external source, so that the pool of rewards is continually updateable.
As already recognized from redemption games, the availability of physical prizes as a reward for achievement is a powerful motivation. There is an unmet need for harnessing this motivation with respect to exercise.
The need persists for a way of moderating access to the Internet, computer games, and television, so that these sedentary activities are not allowed to displace too much healthful, active play.
Given the motivations that a reward structure will engender, a system is needed that will resist efforts at cheating.
A system is needed that will prevent or minimize the inappropriate re-use of rewards. A one-time reward, though delivered electronically, should not be duplicated or reusable.
A further need exists for preventing or minimizing the inappropriate re-distribution or sharing of rewards. That is, a reward provided to one user should not be accessible to another user.
There is also the need, in cases where the user is a child, for notifying the parents of the child's performance in the exercise program. This is to provide both satisfaction to the parents that the child's activities include healthful exercise, and enough information for them to intervene and correct the situation if the child's activities (including attempted cheating) fall short of expectations.
The present invention satisfies these and other needs and provides further related advantages.